About this project

Makey Makey GO: Invention Kit on Your Keychain

$197,151

pledged of $10,000 goal

3,991

backers

Let's change how the world works. We can re-invent everything right now!

What's Makey Makey GO?

Makey Makey GO is the World’s First Invention Kit that goes with you everywhere. Makey Makey GO catalyzes the same creativity and ingenuity in creators as the original, award-winning Makey Makey Classic and gives today’s tinkerers, dreamers, and makers even more mobility—allowing them to invent anytime, anywhere.

Makey Makey GO connecting a banana to laptop. While the look and feel is as simple as peeling a banana, the intricate sensors and circuitry were engineered by PhDs from MIT.

Small enough to fit on your keychain, book bag, or bracelet, Makey Makey GO turns everyday objects into touchpads and combines them with the internet. It’s a simple tool-slash-toy that allows beginners and experts to make countless art, music, engineering, and science projects. It comes ready to use out of the box with no setup and no installations. Just plug and play.

You Can Wear It or Attach it to Your Stuff

Make + Key + On the GO = Makey Makey GO!

By practicing inventing everywhere with Makey Makey GO you start to gain invention literacy—you become able to "read" inventions (understand others' inventions), and you become able to "write" inventions (make your own inventions). As with ordinary reading and writing, invention literacy is invaluable even if you never become a professional inventor.

What Can I Make?

That’s up to you! The main thing is that Makey Makey GO turns the world into a giant construction kit—because world-changing ideas don’t always happen in a lab or at school. Sometimes they happen in the shower, on the playground, flying a kite, or sitting under an apple tree.

Donut Spacebar

In a Text Editor, Makey Makey GO pushes "space" every time you touch the donut

Slackline Score Keeper

The score goes up the longer you stay on the Slackline

Dog-o-Phone

When Puppy touches the foil heart, Skype calls his people so he can say "Wooof!"

Slip'n Selfie

A High-Five triggers a selfie photo on a tablet as you launch off the ramp into the water

Plant Harp

Make a Harp from Palm Fronds, Cardboard and Thumbtacks. Strum the plant harp to trigger sounds and visuals on the laptop.

Flappy Jello

Give new meaning to "Play with your Food." Grab some jello out of the fridge, and grab your Makey Makey GO off the fridge door (it's a magnet!). Play a video game by slapping jello.

How Does Makey Makey GO Work?

Plug Makey Makey GO into the USB port of your laptop and then Alligator Clip an object to the Makey Makey GO board. For example, a banana. When you touch the banana the Makey Makey GO sends the computer a keyboard or mouse message. The computer just thinks Makey Makey GO is a regular keyboard or mouse. Therefore it works with all programs and webpages, because all programs and webpages take keyboard and mouse input.

What Objects Does it Work With?

Most materials that can conduct at least a tiny bit of electricity will work. Here are some materials people have used in our workshops: Leaves, aluminum foil, cars, running garden hose, silverware, milk, wet things, alive things, metallic things, graphite, play dough, kitchen sinks, etc. If something won't work, you can make it work for example by applying copper tape or getting them wet.

What Apps/Webpages Does it Work With?

It literally works with any app and any webpage that use a mouse or a keyboard press, which is almost every app or webpage a laptop can run. it just presses keyboard buttons and clicks the mouse. You might try a one button game website, or a music website such as TouchPianist. Use Photobooth or an online webcam program to trigger selfies, and use Powerpoint to advance slides. Launch Skype or FaceTime and hover the mouse arrow over the "call" button. Cue up a video on YouTube and trigger it to play with the spacebar or the mouse click. Or use one of the many custom Apps that we have created for you. There are countless possibilities.

Who is Makey Makey GO For?

Age 6 to 101, Kids and Teens Love Makey Makey, but so do Hobbyists and Experts

While Makey Makey GO is playful and easy to use, it packs a lot of power and has a sleek technical design that geeks love.

Requirements?

Makey Makey GO works with any laptop or computer with a USB port and a recent operating system. How recent? We have tried it with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 & 8, and Mac OSX. It also works with some tablets and mobile devices.

Makey Makey GO Plugged into a MacBook Pro. By hooking up the traditional pinball machine button to the Makey Makey GO you can play two pinball games at once.

Makey Makey GO plugged into a Windows Surface tablet running Windows 8. The score counts how long the person has stayed on the slackline.

Makey Makey GO plugged into a Samsung Galaxy running Android using a USB adapter. Cardboard SmartSword is made with a Smartphone, some aluminum foil, and Makey Makey GO. When the sword touches your "enemy" you get a point.

Makey Makey Classic - The original Makey Makey that started it all ($50 value)

Why Did You Create Makey Makey GO?

We believe that everyone is creative, inventive, and imaginative. We believe that everyone can create the future and change the world. We believe that the whole world is a construction kit, if we choose to see it that way. So we have dedicated our lives to making easy-to-use invention kits.

We redesigned Makey Makey Classic to focus it down to its absolute bare essentials: a single capacitive sensor input with a single alligator clip that can pretend to be any key or a mouse click. Then we gave it a magnet, a keyring, and shrunk it down so small that it fits anywhere. The result is something that can always GO with you and that is unbelievably simple to use. It's the size of a USB thumb drive and just as easy to plug and play.

We designed Makey Makey GO to feel more like a kitchen gadget or a multi-tool and less like a traditional circuit.

Makey Makey GO stuck to a fridge door magnetically is just one example of how Makey Makey GO is always within grasp.

Makey Makey Classic

In 2012 we created, Kickstarted and delivered (early) the original Makey Makey, and it was named Best of Kickstarter. It has now gone into the hands of 200,000 inventors and delighted millions of others.

Makey Makey Awards and Press

The Makey Makey Classic was named one of Consumer Reports’ “Best Tech Toys of 2014” and one of Popular Science's “Best of Toy Fair (2014).” In addition, Makey Makey Classic was recently inducted into the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) permanent collection.

TED Talk on Makey Makey

"I used to want to design a utopic society, or a perfect world or something like that. But as I'm getting older I'm realizing that my idea of a perfect world really can't be designed by one person or even by a million experts. It's really going to be 7 billion pairs of hands, each following their own passions, and each kind of like a mosaic, coming up and creating this world in their backyards and in their kitchens. And that's a world I really want to live in."

Who are we?

Todd Eddie, Jay Silver, David ten Have, and Rachel Silver.

Jay Silver leads JoyLabz and recently came out of MIT Media Lab and Intel. Dave ten Have, COO, co-founded the first cloud 3D printing company, Ponoko, and is an awesome Hacker. Todd Eddie, our VP, is a climber, and he's a Georgia Tech electrical engineer. Rachel Silver, our Logistics Goddess, studied visual arts at Sarah Lawrence and Reed College and is a gardening guru. Liam Nilsen, who is a lifelong unschooler, joined most recently to handle social media — he also runs the Endor project.

We all collaborated from across the globe to bring Makey Makey GO into existence. As Dave said the day before launching the Kickstarter, "I think I just realized that I am living in the future. I live in New Zealand, but here I am in Cocoa Beach riding an electric bamboo/carbon-fiber bike, made by a friend out of local bamboo and left over carbon fiber, to UPS to overnight prototypes of an invention kit the size of my thumb that didn't even exist until 2 weeks ago to people all over the world. I am my childhood self's superhero."

So many people contributed to Makey Makey GO that they can't all be listed here. Please see the about page for credits. Eric Rosenbaum co-invented Makey Makey Classic with Jay. Makey Makey would not be possible without the input of literally thousands of people. We are so grateful!

Risks and challenges

We fulfilled our last Kickstarter early with over 11,000 backers. We have shipped 200,000 Makey Makey Classics worldwide over the last 3 years. We are already prepared to manufacture and ship Makey Makey GO as seen in the video right now, but we are working to get our costs down. If the new manufacturing process is delayed we will ship on time using the existing proven method that we have already used.